486 HISTORY OF 



t!ie unhappy huntsman with liis trunk, flung him up to a vast 

 height in the air, and received him upon one of the tusks as he 

 iell : and then turning towards the other two brothers, as if it 

 were with an aspect of revenge and insult, held out to them the 

 impaled wretch, writhing in the agonies of death. 



The teeth of the elephant are what produce the great enmity 

 between him and mankind ; but whether they are shed like the 

 horns of the deer, or whether the animal be killed to obtam 

 them, is not yet perfectly known. ^11 we have as yet certain 

 is, that the natives of Africa, from whence almost all our ivory 

 comes, assure us that they find the greatest part of it in their 

 forests; nor would, say they, the teeth of an elephant recom- 

 pense them for their trouble and danger in killing it ; notwith. 

 standing, the elephants which are tamed by man are never known 

 to shed their tusks ; and from the hardness of their substance, 

 they seem no way analogous to deer's horns. 



The teeth of the elephant are very often found in a fossil 

 state. Some years ago, two great grindiiig-teeth, and part of the 

 tusk of an elephant, were discovered at the depth of forty-two 

 yards in a lead-mine in Flintshire.' 



The tusks of the mammoth, so often found fossil in Siberia, 

 and which are converted to the purposes of ivory, are generally 

 supposed to belong to the elephant : however, the animal must 

 have been much larger in that country than it is found at present, 

 as those tusks are often known to weigh four hundred pounds ; 

 while those that come from Africa seldom exceed two hundred 

 and fifty. These enormous tusks are found lodged in the sandy 

 banks of the Siberian rivers ; and the natives pretend that they 

 belong to an animal which is four times as large as the elephant. 



There have lately been discovered several enormous skeletons, 

 five or six feet beneath the surface, on the banks of the Ohio, 

 not remote from the river Miume. in America, seven hundred 

 miles from the sea-coast. Some of the tusks are near seven feet 

 long; one foot nine inches in circumference at the base, and one 

 foot near the point ; the cavity at the root or base nineteen 

 inches deep. Besides their size, there are yet other differences : 

 the tusks of the true elephant have sometimes a very slight 

 lateral bend ; these have a larger twist, or spiral curve, towards 

 the smaller end : but the great and specific difference consists 



J Pennant's Syuopsi:*, p. 'JO. 



